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Hi again, Thomas. Jane. I admire your idealism, and am frightened by it. Let's leave it at that. --Thomas. "Idealism"? Very funny! A female college friend or student of yours is recently pregnant. She is single and recently out of work and desperate and not thinking too clearly, and she comes to...

Hi Thomas. The source of your information and long quote is from a 21st century Rabbinic thinker, Rabbi Kaplan. --Jane-Q. (1) Well the quote is his, but the terms and their exegesis are as old as Scripture. (2) My personal interests are Patristics and Christian Platonism, I could have quoted...

Hi Thomas. Practicality, in the end, will always trump what in an ideal world "feels morally right." --Jane-Q. So ends justify the means? --Thomas. Only utopia-seeking idealists believe that. Hitler will murder millions of misfits to achieve racial purity. Stalin will starve to death a third...

Hi Thomas. Thank you for the Hebrew linguistic lesson: The soul consists of three parts which are called by the Hebrew names, nefesh, ruach and neshama. The word neshama is a cognate of nesheema, which means literally "breath." Ruach means "wind." Nefesh comes from the root nafash, meaning...

Was there abortion (or something like it) in the ancient world? Yes. The best documented examples are from China and the Greco-Roman world. But it likely existed most everywhere in the ancient world (and lasting, in some places, up into fairly recent history). How did it work? An infant is...

Hi all. The original argument I was making was very narrow: (read it) One KEY tenet of the Pro-Life movement's theory. Not all positions expounded by Pro-Life. Everything I've read within, and about, the Hebrew Bible . . . points to this pervasive theological POV: Life begins with the first...

I've run across some interesting (and rather revealing) scientific studies, recently: They look at religious ("church-going") individuals versus nonreligious ("non-church-going") individuals. In a carefully controlled study by Deepak Malhotra, relative "generosity" was looked at. Which group...

One of the key arguments employed by the Pro-Life side of the ongoing Abortion debate (at least in America) is the Pro-Life assertion that life begins at conception. There is some good science which might be enlisted to support this contention (and just as much good science that might suggest...

Hi Thomas. Let me try to explain: A man gives a man an injection, and the man dies. Is that murder? Homicide by malpractice? Where is the "sinning in one's heart"? (Think I have missed your point, Thomas. "Sin" = "crime" . . . ?) Try this: A woman thinks about giving man an injection. The...

Howard Bloom is another author who provides an interesting spin upon the "Atheist's Dilemma." For 350 years, science has dodged one of the biggest mysteries in the universe - the God Problem . . . the problem that the creationists and the intelligent design advocates are trying to rub our noses...

There was belief before there was doubt, but only after there was a culture of doubt could there be a kind of active believing that is at the center of modern faiths. Until the Greeks filled libraries with skepticism and secularism, no one ever thought of having a religion where the central...

Is "sinning in one's heart" actually a sin? But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. --Matthew 5:28. This weekend and next in Portland, Oregon, is the "first annual" Come Inside theater festival at Post 5 Theatre...

I'm in good physical condition. At my age I have to be (and it is something of job-requirement, too). So if Jesus showed up in my dressing room, clothing-choices would be the last thing on my mind to question him about!! I've always wondered . . . If Jesus appeared today, would he be...

Hi Toshka. It sounds like you are claiming that Craz is a stooge for Israeli "propaganda." I read a lot of witness reports in my day-job. Some are clearly biased, others appear to be a reasonably honest report from a witness's personal experience. I could be fooled here, I admit. But Craz's...

Hi Shibolet. I don't like labels. But technically - in the theist/atheist debate - I am more on your side of the fence than on the other. But typically, in this kind of debate, atheists have better arguments - because atheists base their arguments within a "critical thinking" process. Theists...

My understanding of ancient Israelite customs is: The eldest male child - or whichever male child receives the father's blessing - receives a "double portion" of the inheritance. Jacob: two thirds. Esau: one third. Jane.

Thoughts on theology. Hi Gordian Knot. Thank you so much for your very correct and down-to-earth defense of science ! ! Science's built-in "self-critical" method is why science works. Ultimately science (i.e. ultimately science-based "truth") is never about "belief," it's about "evidence."...

What is the origin of the word "Hebrew"? Hi Jayhawker Soule. Another brilliant essay by Frank Moore Cross (Chapter 3 in From Epic to Canon) is: "Reuben, the Firstborn of Jacob: Sacral Traditions and Early Israelite History." (I recently reread it.) Cross traces the origins of Israelite...

Did God Have a Wife? . . . is the provocative title of respected archeologist William G. Dever's 2005 book on this subject. Yet only chapters 6, 7, and 9 deal specifically with the Asherah issue. The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel . . . is equally...

Hi paarsurrey. After Jacob came from Paddan Aram, he arrived safely at the city of Shechem in Canaan and camped within sight of the city. For a hundred pieces of silver, he bought from the sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem, the plot of ground where he pitched his tent. There he set up an...